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Diverse Reads February 2025 |
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LibbyTo explore eBooks and audiobooks for Black History Month, please visit this link. Enjoy these and thousands of additional titles with your library card in the free Libby app, available for Android, iOS, and Amazon Fire devices. Or, use Libby in your web browser at libbyapp.com. |
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The Marvellers by Dhonielle ClaytonThe first Conjuror to attend the Arcanum Training Institute along with Marvellers from around the world, 11-year-old Ella must prove her innocence, with the help of a new friend, when a dangerous criminal escapes and her mentor disappears.
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Isaiah Dunn is My Hero by Kelly J. BaptistReferring to his late father's journal for advice on how to be the man of the house, young Isaiah taps the support and ideas of two school friends who help him navigate rules and manage without superpowers.
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Just Right, Jillian by Nicole D. CollierTo keep her promise to her grandmother, fifth-grader Jillian must learn to speak up, break out of her shell and show everyone her true self to win the school's biggest academic competition.
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Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun
by Tola Okogwu
A Solari, one of a secret group of people with super powers unique to Nigeria, Onyeka is sent to the Academy of the Sun where she and her new friends must put their powers to the test.
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Grown
by Tiffany D. Jackson
When legendary R&B artist Korey Fields spots Enchanted Jones at an audition, her dreams of being a famous singer take flight. Until Enchanted wakes up with blood on her hands and zero memory of the previous night. Who killed Korey Fields? Before there was a dead body, Enchanted's dreams had turned into a nightmare. Because behind Korey's charm and star power was a controlling dark side. Now he's dead, the police are at the door, and all signs point to Enchanted.
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Chaos Theory by Nic StoneA senior at Windward Academy, Shelbi, who has a diagnosed mental illness, keeps to herself until she forms a connection with Andy Criddle, who is battling addiction, but the closer they get, the more the past threatens to pull them apart.
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Dear Martin by Nic StoneWriting letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.
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Forever is Now by Mariama LockingtonSuffering from agoraphobia after witnessing a scene of police brutality, Sadie discovers, with the help of family, friends and online activists, that she can build a safe place inside herself. |
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This thought-provoking nonfiction narrative recounts the discovery of a racist social media account in the small town of Albany, California, that forever changes the lives of a group of high school students and leaves everyone wondering about accountability for harmful online speech. |
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Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King
by Preston Lauterbach
This exploration of the Black musicians who shaped Elvis Presley's music focuses on four overlooked artists while examining their influence, legacies and the systemic injustices that kept them in poverty as others profited from their work.
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King: A Life
by Jonathan Eig
Drawing on recently declassified FBI files, this first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon reveals the courageous and often emotionally troubled man who demanded peaceful protest but was rarely at peace with himself, while showing how his demands for racial and economic justice remain just as urgent today.
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Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
by Michael Harriot
The acclaimed columnist and political commentator presents a sharp and often hilarious retelling of American history that focuses on the overlooked contribution of Black Americans and corrects the idea that American history is white history.
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John Lewis: A Life
by David Greenberg
Based on interviews and previously unreleased FBI files, a professor of history at Rutgers University presents the definitive biography of John Lewis's journey from rural Alabama poverty to becoming a pivotal Civil Rights leader and "conscience of the Congress."
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Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People
by Tiya Miles
Written with her characteristic tenderness and imaginative genius, a National Book Award-winning author weaves Tubman's life into the fabric of her world, probing the ecological reality of Tubman's surroundings and examining her kindship with other enslaved women, revealing a story of powerful inspiration for our own time of troubles.
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Sharks Don't Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist
by Jasmin Graham
From a marine biologist and co-founder of Minorities in Shark Sciences, a powerful debut memoir: the uplifting story of a young Black scientist's challenging journey to flourish outside the traditional confines of academia, inspired by her innate connection to nature's most misunderstood animal--the shark.
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Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
by Imani Perry
A National Book Award winner examines the connection of the color blue to Black history, weaving together themes of hope, melancholy and personal experience to examine race in ways that transcend politics and ideology.
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Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden
by Camille T. Dungy
Poet and scholar Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. She employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows as metaphor for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it.
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There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
by Hanif Abdurraqib
One of our culture's most insightful critics and most of all, an Ohioan, reflects on the golden era of basketball during the 1990s and explores what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tensions between excellence and expectation and the very notion of role models.
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Hip-Hop Is History
by Questlove
The renowned drummer from The Roots and New York Times best-selling author chronicles fifty years of hip-hop and how it has affected every aspect of our culture, from fashion and film to TV.
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This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets
by Kwame Alexander, editor
Exploring joy, love, origin, race, resistance and praise, this beautiful poetry anthology, featuring works from the most prominent and promising Black poets and writers of our time, is filled with poignant and delightful imagery, music and raised fists.
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When Southern Women Cook: History, Lore, and 300 Recipes with Contributions from 70 Women Writers
by Morgan Bolling
Shepherded by Toni Tipton-Martin and Cook's Country Executive Editor and TV personality Morgan Bolling, When Southern Women Cook showcases the hard work, hospitality, and creativity of women who have given soul to Southern cooking from the start. Every page amplifies their contributions, from the enslaved cooks making foundational food at Monticello to Mexican Americans accessing sweet memories with colorful conchas today.
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Harlem Rhapsody
by Victoria Christopher Murray
In 1919 Harlem, literary editor Jessie Redmon Fauset is at the forefront of a Black cultural renaissance, discovering talents like Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen, but her ambition and a secret affair with W.E.B. Du Bois threaten her legacy.
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Passing
by Nella Larsen
Now a major motion picture starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga. Nella Larsen's powerful, thrilling, and tragic tale about the fluidity of racial identity that continues to resonate today. Clare Kendry, a beautiful light-skinned African American woman married to a white man who is unaware of her heritage, long ago cut all ties to her past, but a reunion with a childhood friend forces her to confront her lies.
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Women of the Post
by Joshunda Sanders
Inspired by the true events portrayed in the Netflix release, The Six Triple Eight. In 1944, four friends, part of the only unit of Black women to serve overseas in World War II, work tirelessly to reunite soldiers to their loved ones through the letters they write and find things taking a personal turn when a backlogged letter upends their lives.
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James
by Percival Everett
The enslaved Jim still hides out on Jackson Island when he overhears news that he's to be sold—and thus separated from his family—and Huck still encounters him while running away from an abusive father and faking his own death. But Pulitzer Prize finalist Everett's reenvisioning of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn presents Jim in a whole new light.
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Temple Folk
by Aaliyah Bilal
Ten stories portray the lived experiences of black Muslims grappling with faith, family and freedom in America, presenting moral failures with compassion, nuance and humor to remind us that it's the errors that make us human.
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Guide Me Home: A Highway 59 Novel
by Attica Locke
Facing a potential indictment, a Texas Ranger must investigate his mother's dubious tale of a missing Black college student while balancing his quest for truth, in the third novel of the series following Heaven, My Home.
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Death of the Author
by Nnedi Okorafor
A disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful sci-fi novel, but she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.
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Good Dirt
by Charmaine Wilkerson
Ebby Freeman's life unravels when her brother is killed and a centuries-old family heirloom is shattered but years later, while fleeing a public breakup, she uncovers how that lost, shattered jar may hold secrets to her future.
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PG-13 | Available to stream on Kanopy! While investigating the global phenomenon of caste and its dark influence on society, a journalist faces unfathomable personal loss and uncovers the beauty of human resilience. |
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Do the Right Thing (1989)R On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence
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Bushman (1971)NR | Available to stream on Kanopy! In 1968's tumult, a Nigerian student in San Francisco experiences clashing cultures and elucidates society's ineptitude at living humanely.
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1992 (2022)R A shopkeeper must save his son from an angry mob during the 1992 L.A. uprising after the Rodney King verdict.
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Watermelon Woman (1996)R | Available to stream on Kanopy! A twenty-something African American lesbian struggles to make a documentary film about an elusive actress known as the "Watermelon Woman."
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Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024)Unrated | Available to stream on Kanopy! In 1960, United Nations: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe denouncing America’s color bar, while the U.S. dispatches jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from its first African post-colonial coup.
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The League (2023)PG | Available to stream on Kanopy! The triumphs and challenges of Negro League baseball in the early 20th century. Through rare footage and interviews with iconic players like Satchel Paige and Buck O’Neil, as well as Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, the film highlights the league’s pivotal role in Black communities and the impact of integration.
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(2022-ongoing)
TV-PG
Follows comedian, writer, and cultural critic Baratunde Thurston, as he travels to various locations throughout the United States to explore different landscapes and how they impact experiences of the outdoors.
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